UK – Conservative Manifesto: Implications for NASSCOM

Theresa May has sent a clear signal that she does not intend to relax her tough line on immigration from when she was at the Home Office. The pledge to reduce migration to the tens of thousands stays.

Implications for NASSCOM

May’s increase of the Immigration Skills Charge to £2000 per year is both regressive and damaging to NASSCOM member companies. Coupled with a reaffirmation of her commitment to reducing net migration to below 100,000.

However, she has opened up a window of opportunity for NASSCOM and its members by acknowledging that the tech industry is a strategically important one for the UK economy.

Immigration

Double the Immigration Skills Charge to £2,000 per year per employee.

Ensure that British businesses can recruit the brightest and the best from around the world.

Reduce net migration to below 100,000.

Increase the earnings threshold for someone wishing to sponsor family visas.

Toughen visa requirements for students and expect them to leave the UK unless they qualify for new, higher requirements that allow them to work after finishing their studies.

Trade

Ensure immediate stability by lodging new UK schedules with the WTO, in alignment with EU schedules which we are bound to as a member state.

Seek to replicate all EU free trade agreements and support the ratification of agreements entered into during or EU membership.

Introduce a Trade Bill in the next Parliament.

Brexit

Control immigration and secure the entitlements of EU nationals in Britain and British nationals in the EU.

Maintain the Common Travel Area and maintain as frictionless a border as possible for people, goods, and services between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Maintain worker’s rights conferred on British citizens from membership of the EU.

EU Law

Enact a Great Repeal Bill that will convert EU law into UK law, so that the rights of workers and protections given to consumers and the environment by EU law continue to be available in UK law.

Create the necessary powers to correct laws that do not operate appropriately once we have left the EU.